The other day, I watched on HBO Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and was quite appalled and broken-hearted by the savage massacre committed by the soldiers, politicians, and most shockingly, the Christian citizens against the American Indian! Not even the children were spared!

Not only were the Indians exposed to all types of diseases, but were denied proper health medications when they contracted the diseases.

I've got some well read and intelligent LJ Friends, so this isn't NEW news for them as it is for me, since I always seem to be the last to know important stuff!

My questions are, why such cruelty, and in what manner have the American Indians been compensated today, for having had their land stolen from them? Am I wrong for feeling such antagonism for the exploitation of the American Indian by the settlers? Is it true what I saw in that movie? Please give me your thoughts.

Comments

Funny thing is that the compensations are not helping...google and read some about conditions on current reservations...esp pine ridge in SoDak.

In the 1960 the missouri river was dammed in SD, the reservation was part of the land that was going to be flooded....the BEST property on the reservation.....the tribe was negotiating a fair price for the land but congress decided that the tride was a ward of the governement and had not right to =negotiate.....so they gave them about 1/100th of the market value of the land...while on the other side of the river anglo farmers got full market value....this was 1960's

But back to you original question...how could people be so cruel? It is the same MO everytime there is a genocide on other...whether is was Hitler and jews.....or Custer and the Lakota....or blacks in the South....you propagate the idea that the accused are less HUMAN.

How could soldiers kill babies at wounded knee? I have in my hands (seriously) a elem. text book from 1871....which could have been the text used when those very soldiers were in school....

"The Indians were found in a savage state. They were the destitute of all that constitutes civilization. Their main delight was war.

(skip some text about Indians massacring pioneers....)

Americans are to-day fighting Indians in Arizaona and Montana, just as in the 17th century they contended with them for a strip of land along the Atlantic coast. It is not for us to say who is to blame. It is true that the whites were not always just true and prudent in their dealins with the Indians. But, apeart from that, there seems to be a hostility between the Indian character and civilization. And it is not to be doubted that in a few more years the Red Men wil dissappear from the American continent."-How would you feel if this is what you were taught in grade school?

Honestly, I'm sick of hearing about how the poor Indians lost their land and live in poverty and bla bla bla.

It's really simple. There was a land war and they lost. Now they can either integrate into the society that exists on top of where theirs used to be and quit boo-hooing about it, or they can sit and wallow in their own misery. These people need to get off the reservations, educate themselves and do something with their lives just like any other American. They've got just as much opportunity as anyone else, if not MORE. They should use it instead of sitting around crying about how they lost the war.

War is a horrible, bloody, gruesome thing... but it's a fact of life and it happened, and I'm glad it happened. Without war there is no progress and honestly, America is better off for it.

Besides, the United States has far done more for the people they went to war with over a century ago than any other country would have.

I took a class on the sociology of the Lakota...there are about a hundred reasons why they don't "get off the reservation" the main reason is that in their culture the Tiospaye (extended family) is important above everything else..to leave the Res means leaving the Tiospaye and thus abandoning all you were taught was important.

It would be like asking Americans to give up their cars...LOL....or the constitution.

Conquerers came over, deemed them as savages, and claimed the land. Then the self appointed rulers of the land deemed it necessary to cleanse the land of savages to make way for modern civilization. I'm sure many tried to convert them to their beliefs, but of course many of the indians did not conform to the ways of the white man. So, they were deemed a threat to their authority. Thus, waged war and killed them like beasts.

As for the medical issues you refered to. Of course they didn't give them medical attention. They gave them blankets with small pox. Why would they treat them afterwards? They wanted to get rid of them.

And no, they haven't been repaid for the atrocities. And I don't think they ever will because it was considered events of war.

Also, people will argue their land wasn't stolen because they had no claim to the land. They just lived on it like animals live on land. Thus, they had no legal authority because they were animals -- i.e. savages.

As for exploitation... same thing. They were deemed as animals. (In their minds...) What's the difference between using an Ox or a "savage" to cultivate land when they're both deemed to be animals?

But first, BM@WK was a hack job on history. There, it's said. Let's go back to the way things were.

You can take a look at any number of civilizations that have been beaten back and effectively conquered, and you'll see that people are alike all over. Ireland comes to mind as one example. Have you ever heard the expression "beyond the pale"? It's a direct reference to a time when the English ruled Ireland. There was a sort of "line of demarcation" that showed where English colonization ended that they called "The Pale". Anything that wasn't English was deemed savage and distinctly uncivilized. Thus everything not colonized, everything uncivilized, everything Irish... was beyond the Pale.

Long story short, people are extremely crappy to each other a lot of the time. The Native American tribes were that way toward each other until the Europeans arrived, and a lot of settlers were that way toward the Natives.

This country was built on ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, plain and simple. Anglos in this country justified it by the religious, racial, and cultural superiority they attributed to themselves.

Similar things happened in all New World countries, either flat out ethnic cleansing or total domination of the indigenous peoples, justified by European superiority. These issues are still alive and well today, just look at the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, the underlying cause of Chavez's rise in Venezuela, Evo Morales election in Bolivia, the displacement of indigenous people in the Amazon to make way for farming, ranching and timber interests, etc.

As far as compensation in this country, the closest thing to compensation many tribes have gotten is the recent rise in Indian casinos based on their unique legal status. Of the 10 poorest counties in America, 8 are predominantly Native and largely comprised of reservations.

A lot of the comments indicate that most people still believe that the indigenous tribes were all nomads or semi nomadic, which just isn’t the reality. It just happens that the memorable westerns were based in the Dakotas, I guess. Actually, from Ohio down to Mississippi, agriculture-based “civilized” tribes were common. I descend from the Choctaw in Mississippi, and my ancestors were marched to the Oklahoma Territory in 1832. Contrary to the views of the condescending commentators, we don't have any reservation land, and are integrated into the mainstream of society. I live two miles from a Choctaw casino, and I can tell you first-hand I don't get a penny of the money from that in the form of welfare check or something like that.

The tribal leaders do build good institutions with the money they raise, though. They have a HUD like housing project that builds houses better than HUB homes. I was born in a Choctaw hospital. I got free healthcare in a Choctaw clinic when I was a kid. There's a fodd program that gives out perishables. The US federal government doesn’t have much to do with it anymore. The funds come from bingo, casinos, and the gas stations and smoke shops the tribe runs while being exempt from state and national taxes.

Why does the tribe get tax exemption? Not over any sort of affirmative action or white guilt program, as most will have believe, but because of a more familiar legal status. The Choctaw Nation, after all these years, never actually gave up it’s national sovereignty. The federal government exempts the native tribes for the same reason they wouldn't tax the Iranian Shah while he was exhiled. He was a sovereign.

Anyway the story is this...in S America people are dealing in slave trade (Spanish Colonial times) but missionaries come in and start converting the natives to Catholics.....the slave traders are losing business because you can't use Christians as slaves.

They call on the Vatican, and manage to get the Church to declare that the natives have no soul and thus are not Christians....in an instant all these people who believed in the church suddenly become slaves again.

Where are the Buffalo? I didn't know until I read this, and it made me sick!

"The commercial killers, however, weren't the only ones shooting bison. Train companies offered tourists the chance to shoot buffalo from the windows of their coaches, pausing only when they ran out of ammunition or the gun's barrel became too hot. There were even buffalo killing contests. In one, a Kansan set a record by killing 120 bison in just 40 minutes. "Buffalo" Bill Cody, hired to slaughter the animals, killed more than 4,000 buffalo in just two years.

One general believed that buffalo hunters "did more to defeat the Indian nations in a few years than soldiers did in 50." By 1880, the slaughter was almost over. Where millions of buffalo once roamed, only a few thousand animals remained. Soon, their numbers dwindled, with the largest wild herd -- just a few hundred animals -- sheltered in the isolated valleys of the newly created Yellowstone National Park."

Little one, google "Trail of Tears" one more situation where a young America truly disgraced itself.

What is truly wonderful though is the honor of the "Indian" Nations, Regardless what the US government did to them through out the history of the U.S. in 1940's the Navajo's stepped forward to serve in the U.S Marines as code talkers. They served admirably, and the code was never broken by the Japanese.

If you ever desire to learn more about the 'Medicine' please let me know, I can send you the names of a number of books that I am sure you will love. The one I am reading now, "Walking with Grandfather" the Wisdom of Lakota Elders I have no doubt you would enjoy.

I didn't see that show on HBO. But I do know how badly the Indians were treated, since day one. Europeans stole their land, raped their women and generally acted like Attila the Hun to the Indians. The general attitude was the Indians are godless savages so we can do anything we want to them. I think a lot of so called Christians back then were shocked to end up at Hell's seven gates.